Resource Friday - The Voice Of The Martyrs

Pastor Nick Kennicott, whom I’ve mentioned a few times on this blog, has a site of his own where on occasion he’ll mention interesting resources that have application for parents. One such recommendation that he made recently, that he said no family should be without as part of their family devotion, is the newsletter The Voice of the Martyr.

For those of us living in the free world, our persecution comes in the form of having others snub their noses at us, call us weak-willed and feeble-minded, or remove Christian icons or doctrine from traditional forums. We don’t have to deal with imprisonment, having our home burned down or torture. There are fellow brothers and sisters in the Lord around the world, however, where that is their reality.

As the VOM site says, our brothers and sisters don’t have to suffer in silence. Your family can receive a free monthly subscription to VOM and learn the truth about Christian persecution going on around the world.

Better yet, you can offer support as part of a family ministry to these that are persecuted by joining PrisonerAlert.com and writing letters of encouragement to those who are imprisoned for their faith. Part of the VOM network, PrisonerAlert offers printable fact sheets on individuals, instruction on how to write the letter (certain things are too dangerous to include, thus endangering the prisoner with harsher treatment), what to expect (you may or may not get a letter in return, depending on the circumstances) and a suggested Bible verse to include in the letter.

You write the letter online, submit it for translation to the prisoner’s primary language, and then receive instruction for mailing the letter yourself (letters received from organizations tend to make captors more suspicious of the prisoner).

Our family already writes notes of encouragement and prayer to people on our church’s prayer list, so adding one more to the list we do weekly would be an easy thing for us to do. Our children will learn the reality of sacrifice for the cause of Christ while at the same time do something tangible to uplift the spirits of those who suffer.

I encourage you to check out this site, and at the least subscribe to the free monthly newsletter. We’re not alone in this great big world. We have brothers and sisters who need us.

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